


Womb For The Lonely

by NorthChill



Series: These Savage Seasons [1]
Category: Lost Boys (Movies), The Lost Boys (1987), The Lost Boys: The Tribe
Genre: Alan is a bastard, Ambiguous Relationships, Bad Parenting, Comfort, Confused Laddie, F/M, Implied/Referenced One Sided Incest, Laddie is a screwed up kid, Lost Boys AU, M/M, Mama Frog, Non Consensual Turning, Pregnancy, Sick Character, Ten Years Later, Vampire Alan, Vampire Edgar, Vampire Sam, cystic fibrosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10511409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthChill/pseuds/NorthChill
Summary: That which does not die does not live,” rumbled Phyllis Frog, smoking pot from the doorway. Laddie wondered bitterly if she’d found that saying in a fortune cookie.Laddie returns to Santa Carla, dying Star in tow, and as always, they have to hide.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's been ages since my last Lost Boys fic. I read the new comics that came out in late 2016 and while I don't count them as canon, there was one plot point of Star suffering from Cystic Fibrosis, which is why she became a vampire in the first place. Bit of a kick in the teeth for the character, but I wanted a fic that explored that concept and it just grew. Major AU elements ahead, but all my LB!fics seem to follow that pattern. 
> 
> I do not own the Lost Boys.

_Walk tall beneath these trees, boy_  
_You monolith, not scarred by fallout_  
_Us wolves were right behind you_  
_And Lucifer will never find you, oh no_

 _I know just where you've been, boy_  
_I've watched you by the stream_  
_And don't be afraid of the dark_  
_'Cos the darkness is simply a womb for the lonely_

**Wolf Song - Patrick Wolf**

 

Phyllis Frog moved around the bed, one hand holding up her kaftan, showing off thick stocking clad legs. She no longer stank of reefer, no longer wore dark glasses, no longer ran a comic store.

Laddie recalled Lucy, and how she would fret, conjuring hot chocolate and bandages and biscuits out of thin air. She'd been pretty, too, inoffensive and motherly, dressed in soft pink wool and cotton skirts that hung over her hush puppies. As a kid, he’d clung to Lucy, every lavender scented inch of her.

Phyllis Frog wasn’t like that. He couldn’t imagine how she was ever a mother. Her hands on Star's hair were too direct, too rough. She had gone back and forth to the kitchen with cups of hot water and lemon, always placing it briskly beside the bed.

He'd never seen Phyllis’s face, not clearly, but the removal of dark glasses and cleaner hair revealed the shadow of her younger son. The low brow, the thin spread mouth, the curve of his nose. Maybe Star found it painful to look at, to see the shadow of her former partner as a haunt on his mother's face. But Star had been too sick, too withered, a yellow pull on her skin, to look too close at anyone or anything.

The Frog household barely had any soft furnishings, minus the stained blankets that covered Star. The chair he currently sat on was mean sticks, the back too straight, the stitching hanging out of the bottom. His shoulders ached. Laddie adjusted his boots, prepping them up at the end of the bed, just short of the thin turn of Star’s ankle. An anklet adorned with a tiny frog charm rested on the bump of the ankle bone. There had been a moon for Michael at one time, a minuet silver batman for Sam, a boom box for Laddie. Now only the boom box and the frog remained.

They had nowhere else to go.  Luna Bay was full of spies, chasing their trail like the steal of car lights on dark road. As Star weakened, her lungs filling with a rasp that shook her from the inside out, Laddie had turned the truck around and brought them back, to the place where it had all began.

Santa Carla.

Edgar's mother had seen the emblem of Frog Brothers logoed on the door of the truck, and had appeared as Laddie had pulled in on the drive. At first, he hadn't recognized the woman silhouetted in the doorway, if not for the billow of her bellbottoms and the distrust eased into the lines circulating her eyes (so like Edgar) he would have thought that the former comic store and flat above had been sold, and this was a new lodger. But as he eased the car door open, the brief brittle flicker of hope in her gaze died, and he'd barely had time before to speak before she'd turned on her heel, leaving the door open.

To anyone else, it would have been rude. But Phyllis was a Frog, and Laddie knew the Frogs well.

Star had been too weak to walk unattended. She'd hobbled beside Laddie, racking out agonising cough after cough, before Laddie had sworn under his breath and just carried her, arms held under her back and knees, and Phyllis Frog had silently made up a bed upstairs.

.

.

.

 

Laddie had never been upstairs before, never seen the dark enclosure of the Frog's bedroom, which apparently consisted of comics, a broken poster and dirty laundry. At least, according to Sam. But the faded 60s wallpaper and the kitsch brightly coloured ornaments told him this was certainly the parents room, although Papa Frog was long gone.

Phyllis Frog looked clean, sober, skin scrubbed too long, as if trying to rid the weed from her pores. She'd leant Star a crimplene nightdress, dusty pink, which washed out Star's skin. Laddie wondered if Phyllis remembered Star, remembered him, or wherever they had merely been greyscale spectres dancing on the ends of her sight where she had lain, stoned, beside the flicker of a black and white television. Had she noticed when Alan had gone missing? Then, Edgar?

He wondered if she'd known about Star, even. If on the short phone calls exchanged over the years, on birthdays or Christmas, whether she'd heard the pull of Star's breath in the background, the rustle of skirt, the clatter of saucepan, the weight of activity. Had she sensed it? Looking at Phyllis Frog now, bent over the closest thing she had to a daughter in law, peeling back the curls stuck clammy to Star’s forehead with squat fingers. She must have. Would Edgar have told her? He didn't tell anyone anything.

Star was asleep. A sick kind of sleep, buried low in the covers. Spittle had congealed around the corners of her mouth. Her ears were bare for the first time in years. It was a strange thing to notice, sure, but Star had always jingled, embellished her ears and wrists like a belly dancer.

Laddie tore into his thumbnail with his teeth.

"What's wrong with her?" Phyllis had a smoker voice. Gravelly, hard. Like Edgar.

"Cystic Fibrosis." Laddie knew the name; that much was true. He paused.  "It makes her cough a lot."

"How long has she got?" Phyllis sat in the other high back chair, slipping her feet out of her slippers. She massaged the back end of her heel. The underneath of her nails was yellowed with nicotine.

"She won't say," Laddie replied. He hoped the long shadows of the afternoon hid his eyes. They hurt, from staring at a road at all hours.

Phyllis lit a cigarette. Not that clean, then.

"By the looks of her,” She muttered. “I would say less than a couple of months, at best. Maybe a year, if she’s lucky.”

.

.

 

The Frog Household may have been the place he frequented as a kid, may have huddled beneath the counter, reading Looney Tunes comics, but now it wore a different skin. The racks that once held the comics had been folded away against the opposite wall. Laddie watched his shadow move on the floor as he went to close the door.

Behind the warehouse that once was credited as the comic store, was a pale beige 70s kitchen, where a staircase lead to a small bathroom, and two rooms barely big enough to be called bedrooms. Laddie discreetly tried the doorknob to Edgar’s adolescent bedroom. It rattled, but wouldn't budge. Locked.

.

 

Phyllis Frog had gotten Star up that morning, run a hot bath, and undressed her like a child. Laddie had remained downstairs, watching the sun move along the sky. There had been no activity that night, no shivers of supernatural air. Even as they’d driven down, Star curled up in scarves and oversized sweaters, and he, sweating with fear, there had been nothing.  No tell-tale flurries of air or malicious whispers tainting the road down to the rusty boardwalk. For the first time, there seemed to be no vampires in Santa Carla.

The night had been long for a different reason. He'd woken every three hours to lift boiled water to Star's mouth and massage her chest as best as he could. Star had brushed his hands lightly away from her stomach. The nightdress drowned her, the ruddiness of the pink a cruel joke on her milkweed flesh with veins sketched ugly across her wrists. He’d slept on the hard backed chair, his feet on the edge of Star's bed. He didn't see why Phyllis went. Or where she had slept.

There was the sound of voices. Star’s quavering tones, thick with mucus, and the growling contralto of Miss Frog. Or Mrs Frog. She'd never been married, and so just like everything in her life, her appropriation of her husband's name had just been a lazy short cut.

Laddie moved into the “lounge” (which was the kitchen. The television sat next to the microwave, and showed signs of having been mistaken for it and vice versa.) The voices continued, this time stronger, and Star’s voice had become thick, not just with illness, and a quiet had fallen on Phyllis. Laddie idly went through the drawers. Beneath the sink was a cardboard box, taped shut. Laddie frowned, fingering the rims of it, moving his fingers across the sealed top. He felt for the box cutter he kept in the back of his jeans.

"Hey, Laddie," It was the first time Phyllis had used his name. She stood in the doorway, hands on her wide hips.

"Yes?"

“When was the last time she bled, do you know?"

Blood held an entire different meaning to Laddie. He looked at her blankly.

"What?"

"The last time she had her rag," Phyllis inhaled her cigarette, releasing smoke through bristled nostrils like a chimney.

"I don't know," Laddie plucked at his sleeve, nervous. He licked his lips. "She doesn't talk about stuff like that."

"There's a lot she doesn’t talk about, hm?" Phyllis chortled dryly. "She's four months gone, at least."

.

 

.

 

Star was awake.

Laddie stood at the door. A cup of hot coffee and dime store bread smeared with margarine rested on the tray he carried. Star looked at him, drawing her legs beneath her, and attempted to sit up.

Laddie did not move. He wasn't sure if he could. Even as he'd toasted the bread and scraped the mould off the margarine, even as he'd prised open the coffee pot and boiled the kettle, it had felt like his arms were working, but the crank of his brain was winding to a standstill.

"You're pregnant." He said. It wasn't a question.

Star lowered her gaze. Her hand hovered over her concealed stomach. The new nightie was tighter, shorter. A formed bump peeked beneath the cotton. Laddie swallowed, hard and vile.

'Yes," She replied.

And even as tears filled her eyes, she smiled.

.

.

.

 

Phyllis Frog offered him a cigarette. He hadn't smoked since he was fourteen. But he lit it, inhaled, exhaled, as he'd seen Dwayne do. Even now, the ticks of behaviour, the memory of handsome shadows, was hard to cease.

"Her body won't be able to hold out much longer," In her hair, she wore a red hippie headband. Laddie neglected to look at it. "Couldn't you get treatment?"

"Too expensive." Laddie rarely spoke. He didn't as a kid. His speech was even rarer now. A shrink would have called him a selective mute. "We've been running too long."

Maybe Phyllis Frog knew what he meant. Maybe she didn't. It didn't matter. Hospitals were too stark, too open. Easily trackable. And Star's condition was rare and expensive.

Phyllis was quiet. Glad for the silence, Laddie looked out the window, par instinct. Early afternoon.

"Who's the father?" Phyllis slid on a pair of dark glasses. It made the question flippant, but there was a heaviness to her movement, a draw on her brow.

Laddie shrugged.

"I dunno."

.

.

 

Phyllis Frog let them stay. It's wasn’t going to be forever, because forever was impossible for both him and Star. But Laddie walked along the bare, cool boardwalk over the next months, never letting his memory rest on one landmark for more than a few seconds.

He found a job working at a grocer. It was daylight hours. The lady who ran it was cut from the same cloth as Lucy Emerson. All lavender, vanilla candles, home baking. Laddie wondered if she was his mother. It was a stray thought he always wore on his sleeve. He'd never known his parents. Or he did, at one time, sure, but half vampirism was a cruel joke. Now all he knew was Star, who was going to leave him.

The thought hit him like a freight train on his way home from work. The sun was setting, trickling pink across the sky, and it hit him. Star was going to die.

The plums he'd been carrying hit the curb, rolling from the brown paper bag, and Laddie had bent to pick them up, tears pushing like needles beneath his eyelids.

Star was going to die.

And there was, eventually, going to be a baby.

 

.

.

.

 

 

The months passed, slow, and some days Star could get up and about, and others, she would sleep. But she ate and drank as much as she could, nibbling the plums Laddie bought her, her one weak craving.

Nobody had found them. Not yet.

Edgar had turned. Laddie didn't even know what that looked like. He'd found Edgar in pursuit of Star, who'd found him three years earlier and had, during that time, became more than just the shop girl for his surfboard shaping. It was a weird notion to think of Star with Edgar, and Edgar with Star, and he'd been both jealous and slack jawed at the entire thing. But it wasn't built to last.

Star, it turned out, hadn't been built to last.

An inherited disease, slowed by half vampire blood, but not cured. Laddie stared long and hard at the shriveled woman on the bed and wondered if she had, at any time, told Edgar. She hadn't told Michael, she hadn't told him until mere months ago, when Edgar had appeared pale and wraith like and Star refused to say what had happened, what had gone down between them.

"We could get Edgar," Laddie said, one night, as Phyllis snored next door. Star tensed, visibly, at the name. Laddie sucked his lower lip, pushing his dark hair from his eyes. "He could fix this. Fix you."

Star's belly was fuller now, stuck out. Her hand, trembling, laid on it, thumb rubbing the navel. Laddie blanched, and looked away.

"It's not a fix, Laddie," she croaked out. "You know that."

"But you could live, at least," He pleaded. "You could be a half vampire again. Edgar wouldn't force you to turn. You know he wouldn't. He's not like the others."

"We don't know that," she whispered. Car lights flashed through the opened blinds, throwing her face into sharp relief. Shallow cheeks, haunted eyes, all too human.

Laddie clenched his fists. Unclenched, clenched. Unclenched, clenched.

"Couldn’t you have gotten rid of it?" It was out before he thought to stop, in a voice he did not recognize.

Star did not respond. He did not expect her to.

"It's..." There was a husk to her voice, and Laddie knew it was more than the mucus clogging her lungs, knew it was more than the charred vocal chords raw from each haggard breath. "It's Edgar, Laddie. It's the evidence that we...that he..."

Star was selfish. Always had been. Even as a kid, when he'd spied her trailing the green eyed boy in the cheap leather jacket, he knew that was dangerous, but Star wanted him, even as she'd promised it was only to save them. Laddie didn't know he wanted to be saved. But Star chose Laddie, and then Michael, over the boys. It was only when he'd seen the morning on that fateful day, where sunlight made the world bright and strange, and he'd forgotten what that looked like. He'd laughed, and forgot. He appreciated Star's promises.

But now, the promise was to something else entirely. Star was choosing Edgar, the unnamed unborn baby, over him.

Star was choosing to die.

Maybe it was the vampire still left in him, but in that moment, he hated her. Hated Edgar, hated Alan, hated Sam, and hated the half formed parasite sat snug in Star's stomach.

Maybe it was because he was selfish, every bit as selfish, as Star.

"Laddie," Star had shifted, bare feet on the carpeted floor, and she waddled towards him, hands pushed to the base of her back to steady herself. "Laddie, I would give you a hundred years, if I could."

"We could have had a hundred years," Laddie glared at the frayed wallpaper, as cool fingers brushed his forehead, the crown of his head, the dip of his cheeks. 'We could have had more."

"That which does not die does not live,” rumbled Phyllis Frog from the doorway. She knew then. Of course she did. Laddie wondered bitterly if she’d found that saying in a fortune cookie.

.

.

 

Laddie walked home from work. The paths he took were solitary, even as the air sweetened and warmed around him. The whispers of spring, maybe, but still Star remained as cold as ever, cheeks flushed with her silent, sad little joy.

His feet were slower, slower. It was if something was willing them to stop. Soon, it was twilight, and Laddie sat on the boardwalk and watched the sky burn gold.

Somebody was standing behind him.

Nowadays, Alan Frog looked less savage, less wild. His difficult hair was cut just below his ears, the cowboy hat abandoned. Black jeans, black shirt, a black coat that smelt of gasoline and wood shavings and sea spray. Laddie closed his eyes and imagined the shape of his childhood friend reflected in the green swirl of Hudson’s bluff, clawed hands outstretched to the break of salt against the cliff.

No whiff of death. Ageless at twenty, the blood had made him, and far more appealing then he’d even been as a human man. Even Laddie, not looking at him, could feel the pull of his presence. Like an unkempt, dark eyed David.

“Hello, Laddie.” He uttered pleasantly. “I’ve not seen you in a while.”

“You’ve been following me.” There were people about, milling around the shops. It was becoming warm enough for snow cones and jean shorts. “Is Edgar here?”

“No.” Alan, bizarrely normal, leant over the railings. “Just me.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s taken to it naturally.” Alan nodded, scratching the back of his ear. “As I knew he would.”

“Oh.” Laddie brought his knees up to his chin, hugging himself. “I suppose that’s fortunate.”

A gaggle of women braving the April chill in flowery bikinis chased a group of young men from their piece of beach. They laughed, ferocious and playful. Laddie followed their fleeting shapes from the corner of his eye. He knew Alan could smell them. Fumbling in his back pocket for a cigarette, he mused whether Alan had fed yet.

A snap of flame appeared to his left.  Alan held out his lighter, and Laddie leant in, igniting the end of his cigarette. He glanced up at Alan, dragging the cigarette from his lips, tapping ashes over the side of the sea wall.

“How about we get out of here?” Alan suggested smoothly.

Laddie smirked.

“Not a chance, Frog.”

Alan returned his smirk. He reached to smooth out the side of Laddie’s hair, thumb rubbing the cleft of Laddie’s mouth.

Laddie stiffened, before a strange sigh eased from his lungs and he pressed his cheek into Alan’s hand. Alan smiled. Yes, so much David. Too much like David.

“Are you going to hurt Star?”

“No,” Alan’s thumbnail cut into Laddie’s lip, drawing a bulb of blood. Laddie could imagine the carousal lights sheening off it. He could even imagine the taste of it. With Alan near, he could. “Edgar has told me not to.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No.”

.

.

 

Laddie followed the elder Frog Brother through the now multiplying crowd, watching the swagger of his broad back. Alan had his coat lapels up, his hands buried in his pockets. The vampire ignored the lights shining inside the eyes of admiring onlookers. Laddie felt it too, the rise in his throat, the drum of his heart, the crawl of lust in his stomach. It was a vampire thing, it had to be. Maybe this was how Michael had felt, racing behind David on the dark Santa Carla sands, all those years back.

They passed from the thinning crowds to the dry beaches, where the ruined hotel lay waiting. The air was thin and dangerous, but Laddie could have walked the way blindfolded. He had, too, in many a dream, where shadows danced like wildfire on the cave walls and he could fly.

Alan sat in David’s old chair like he was born for it.

Laddie went down in front of him. His hands gripped the older man’s knees, inching them apart. Alan physically twenty, Laddie nineteen, who had actually lived his years, naturally. He wet his lips, feeling no pride in the fact.

Alan leant back, folded his fingers together, and sneered.

Laddie pushed up Alan’s shirt, noting the marble skin beneath, and kissed it, moving his hands up to grope at Alan’s shoulders. Nobody knew they were here. Star didn’t, Edgar didn’t. Maybe even he didn’t, by the way his head swam and his fingers tried to find purchase on Alan’s chest.

“You’re giddy, aren’t you?” Alan’s hands closed over Laddie’s, pushing them back painfully, and Laddie gritted his teeth with the discomfort, but did not pull away. Alan’s nails crushed into the back of his head, tugging at his hair. There were no fangs at his throat, only the hot breath of a whisper. “Do you want to be what I am?”

Laddie shook his head, and tried, once again, to kiss him.

They flew. Laddie’s boot lifted from the ground in a flourish and Star’s old bed, rotting cream lace and stale cushions, framed his line of sight. Moving on top of him was Alan, who removed his shirt and dropped it beside the bed. Blue and purple veins wove spider webs beneath his milky skin and Laddie thought of Star’s sick, sweat clad flesh. Maybe vampires didn’t die when they turned. Maybe they froze instead, stilled like an ice sculpture. Alan did not look like death. Star did.

Alan snaked his hand to wrap, firmly, around Laddie’s neck, and his eyes were black red with bloodlust.

Laddie arched in the grip, boots skidding on dusty sheets, and tore at his own shirt buttons, feeling the strain of his erection in his jeans. Alan palmed him, two fingers working down the zip, and Laddie panted, his arousal peaking as incisors pricked pearls in the darkness of Alan’s mouth.

Alan did not bite, but nicked him with concealed claws and teeth. He seemed so different now. More controlled, and maybe it was Edgar’s influence.

Alan snarled, as if he had sensed his thoughts, and sprawled Laddie on his front. Laddie’s jeans were shredded from the waist down, and he was pulled back, into Alan, who couldn’t stop touching, scenting, examining his neck, even as lubricated fingers forked into him and the world swam again.

.

.

The rumble of the waves was a ghost echo in the cave. Alan stretched across the bed, cigarette lit. Laddie, sore and spread and spent, dozed on his chest, observing the dry caked ash in the ancient oil cans.

They flared to life, flames throbbing and spitting at the air. Alan smiled, as if contented, and wrapped one arm around Laddie’s back. Laddie felt the silver teeth of Alan’s skeleton ring tear into the space between his shoulders. Still cradling Laddie, Alan brought it to his lips, and licked the blood off the metal.

“You don’t look like your mom.” Laddie murmured, breathing in at the pain.

Alan had no heartbeat.

Soon neither would Star. 

Alan gave a gruff bark of laughter.

“No,” He offered the cigarette to Laddie, who took a drag. “Mom looked like Edgar. I was supposed to look like Dad, but I never checked.”

“Huh.”

The night streaked the cave in shafts of blue light. Laddie drew back, sitting on Alan’s hips, his knees bent on either side. Alan laid back, blowing circles of smoke into Laddie’s face. Laddie frowned, raking his nails down Alan’s lower stomach, watching blood bubble. His throat was tight, his mouth parched.

Alan made no attempt to conceal his fangs. He flicked his cigarette out of sight, and sitting up, pushed his lips to Laddie’s. Laddie responded, desperate, as if searching for something in Alan’s mouth, in _Alan._

The morning was drawing near. He was terrified.

“You should come back with me,” Alan paused beneath the crook of Laddie’s ear. He’d bitten Laddie’s tongue. Blood pooled in Laddie’s mouth, who moaned at the sensation. “They’re waiting, you know. All of us. Waiting for you.”

Laddie shivered, even as Alan’s palms rubbed his arms up and down. Maybe it was the closest to comfort he was capable of. But the thought, for a second, was delicious.

He shook his head, as he’d seen Star do. Nine years on, and he still parroted her.

“Don’t worry,” Alan slipped his forefingers into Laddie’s mouth, who sucked obediently with bloodied tongue and teeth. “It’ll come around eventually.”

He wanted to shake his head again, and found that he couldn’t quite do it.

“You know,” Alan began. “I’ve been near my old house. I’ve heard every heartbeat in it. Strange, though, that Star should be equipped with two, hm?”

Laddie froze.

His clamped Alan’s wrist, and slid the fingers free from his lips. Blood and saliva trailed the distance.

Alan smiled, and it was one of his old smiles, before Edgar.

“Does he want her back?” Laddie croaked out. The gash on his tongue dully stung.

Alan shrugged.

“He won’t talk to me about it,” He tapped a lengthened nail on Laddie’s cheek. “Is it his?”

“No.” Laddie wiped the blood from his chin. “It’s mine, actually.”

Silence.

Alan began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, throwing his arm over his brow, cheeks crinkled in mirth.

“That’s fucked up, Laddie.”

“Says you!” Laddie lashed out, repressing the scald of tears. He swallowed back the lie. Alan side eyed him with a grin.

“All things considered,” He reached for his coat. “That’s a fair point.”

“Don’t tell Edgar.”

When Edgar was human, violence came too easy. He dreaded to think what Edgar was like now, with bloodlust tearing at his aggression like demented testosterone.

“I’ll think about it,” drawled Alan, dressing so quick Laddie could barely see the blur of him. A kiss was planted on his forehead. “It might slip my mind.”

In a hit of air, Alan was gone.

When he got outside, it was dawn.

.

.

 

 Phyllis was on her knees outside the front door, pouring salt across the entrance to the house. Her hemp trousers were twisted around her legs. Laddie stared at her back for a while, not moving, not saying anything. The cuts and nips and bruises inflicted by her eldest son still sung loud on his skin. Phyllis staggered to her feet, the creak of her bones audible. Laddie winced.

“Star’s in the kitchen,” she said glumly. “Worried sick.”

The sun shone in a pinkish glow through Star’s hair, her piano shawl slipping off her bare shoulders. The radiance through the open blinds gave her the appearance of health. On the plate in front of her was chocolate cake and sliced plums. Her bare feet were cold on the tiles; she still wore her charm anklet.

Plums and chocolate. Would Edgar have gone out in the middle of the night, to stave her cravings?

“Where were you?” The quiver in her tone broke his thoughts, but she sounded strong. If anything could make Star stronger, it was concern. “We saw scouts outside. I thought you were turned, dead, or worse…”

“I worked overtime,” Laddie pulled his collar up over his neck. “It was dark and they let me bunk at the grocer. Sorry, I should have called.”

“That’s it?” She mussed her hair, pulling curls tight against her scalp. She looked far too small, hunched up in the chair, as if the baby bump had soaked up all her sustenance. Maybe there was little difference between vampires and babies. “That’s all you’re gonna say to me, Laddie?”

“I’m sorry. I love you, you know that. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

Star sighed. Their time together was going too fast. It was too short, too painful, too sharp with accusation.

“I love you too,” she answered, weary with him for the first time in her life.

.

.

.

By midday, Star had to return to bed. The added weight of the baby dropped her lungs like an anchor. It was doubly hard to walk, doubly hard to wobble up the stairs, doubly hard for Laddie to watch.

Laddie washed up the plates smeared with plum juice and cheap chocolate crumbs. It formed a red and black water that ran from the porcelain rim, scurrying down the plughole.  Blood water, peppered with the crud of dried skin and saliva. Laddie thought, sickly, of Alan and flinched from the scars on his arms.

 The cupboard beneath the sink had been left open. The visible cupboard box had been disturbed, the tape curled open across the top.

It was easy enough to check that Phyllis was upstairs with Star, easy enough to pull the box free and dump it on the table. It was stacked with folders, at least on the surface, and Laddie removed each one, checking the binding. Stocks, finance, outgoings. He groaned.

But beneath the layers of folders and store documents, there was a flowered album, the pattern of one of Star’s skirts. The pages were stuck together, jellied with time, but Laddie peeled them apart with his finger and thumb.

The majority of the album was empty, white sticky see through sheets, but the first few pages were not. Alan and Edgar Frog, barely three years old, tiny fat baby legs sticking out from miniature kaftans. A fresh faced Phyllis knelt behind them, hands on their shoulders. Her hair was in plaits, hippie braids in her hair, and she looked more like Edgar than ever.  Alan was to her left, his small hands lax in his lap, his stare penetrating. He was dark, and oddly pretty, but sombre. Edgar had his knuckles in his mouth and was smiling through his fingers.

Laddie turned the next page. Edgar sat at the end of the bath, seven summers young, wrapped in a towel fluffier then his hair, toes curled into the carpet. Phyllis, once again, behind him. There was a familiar drag to Phyllis here, a caving of her face, but still she sat beside her son, one arm warm around him. Alan watched from the doorway.

“I wasn’t a good mother.” Laddie jumped, letting the book fall closed. Phyllis stood by the window, her palms rubbing across her hips, as if trying to pull back the sensation of a phantom pregnancy. “I know that.”

Laddie was silent.

Phyllis opened one of the stock books. The writing on it was clear, but childish, cramped in the margins. Edgar, who always had a pencil tucked behind his ear.

 “It’s easier to love them in your memories,” She hovered a hand over the pencilled numbers, where once upon a time, Edgar’s sweat and skin had made contact. “It’s harder to love ‘em when they’re in front of you.”

“Has Alan been here?” He said, breathless.

“Yes.”

 .

.

Star was going to die on the 8th of July, 1995. He knew the years would repeat that date on a spiral. There would always be a dip in his stomach, a sharp stab somewhere in the back of his brain. A baby’s birthday, a woman’s death. It was a tale as old as time. She would be twenty eight, him nineteen. It would be the eve of the Santa Carla summer.

“Anytime now,” said Tabitha, the grey haired fortune teller Phyllis had called from the boardwalk. Tarot cards were stuffed in her tapestry bag, moons and suns hanging on her long lobes. She gently took Star’s pulse, felt the shape of the baby through the girl’s stomach. She frowned at the rasp on Star’s breath. “I don’t need my cards to tell you she won’t make it.”

The women conversed downstairs. Tabitha brought towels and a Moses basket. She had lived long enough in Santa Carla to not ask why Star wasn’t in the hospital.

Laddie kissed Star’s mouth as she slept. She opened her eyes and stared at him for a long time.

“Will you take care of the baby?” She whispered.

Laddie looked away.

.

.

“You came here to get away from him,” They’d had this conversation before. “He turned, you were afraid he’d turn you, so you fled, with me.”

“I’m not afraid of Edgar.” Star thumbed her hair. “But I can’t be what he is. What they are.”

“You’re afraid,” Laddie sat by the window. It was summer now, he could feel it. He stared out at the dusky sky. “You’re afraid that if he asked you, you would have said yes. If there was one person you couldn’t say no to, it was him.”

“Edgar would have wanted me to run.” Star, exhausted by the hot exchange of words, flopped back on the bed. Breath was too precious now, to be wasted. “So I did. I did what he always told me. And Laddie, child or no, I still would have died. I would have died as a human when I became a vampire, and if I hadn’t I would have died from my illness. I saw no point in fighting my pregnancy.”

“A human baby wouldn’t survive vampire blood.”

Star shut her mouth. A muscle pulsed in her neck, her throat dropping as she swallowed.

“Enough, Laddie,” She whimpered. _“Enough.”_

.

.

When they made love that final time, were her lungs beginning to soft and blacken, like fruit left out in the sun? Laddie remembered the trailer all too well, each close cramped ridge of it, and he’d thought of their two bodies, their lives, wound in the coffee stained weave of the love seat. The trailer would be sat empty now, abandoned, like the breath reclining from Star’s lips. That time, Edgar had been human. During that time, Star had been well, as well as she ever could be. Both of them were gone, in different ways.

Star’s love hadn’t won, if she had loved Edgar at all. Maybe there was a stronger, darker, prouder love, if one could call Alan that.

He felt the bare skin where Alan had kissed, imagined the burn radiating from his memory, and yes, he could believe it. He still didn’t know why he’d followed Alan that night, why he wanted him so intently. On this particular night, as he locked the shutters for his employees, it felt the same as the one where he’d followed Alan to the cave.

A hiss tickled the breeze.

It was the 7th of July, 1995.

Laddie picked up his bag, and ran.

.

.

The setting sun made the shadows dotting in the bedroom window stretch like Nosferatu on the staircase. Laddie stepped over the salt circle, shut and bolted the door behind him, and took the stairs two at a time, feeling the rising ache in his chest that he was about to encounter a life without Star.

Phyllis blocked him on the stair.

“It’ll do her no good if we all crowd in there,” Her hand was hard on his chest. “Wait downstairs.”

“She needs me!” Laddie gabbled with the grief of a child, not the grace of a man. Phyllis did not budge. “Please…”

“All she needs now is a prayer,” Maybe Phyllis had been a mother. She could close his thoughts and intentions with a single statement. “The head is already showing. It won’t be long.”

.

.

Laddie’s forehead rested against the steering wheel. He’d hidden in the truck. He didn’t care if the vampires got him. He didn’t care that there was no salt, no garlic, no stakes. The holy water of his tears was all he had to defend himself. Upstairs, Star screamed.

Silence.

His watch beeped weakly.

Midnight.

A baby’s cry raised the hair on his arms.

.

.

Phyllis was sitting at the kitchen table, dark glasses slid on her nose, hands folded in front of a half rolled joint.

Laddie sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

“Boy or girl?” He bit the back of his fingernail as he said it. “Is Star okay?”

Phyllis did not respond.

“Mrs Frog?” He touched her shoulder. A neat little bite was sandwiched between the crook of her neck and the lift of her chin. She was still breathing, barely, but behind her glasses Phyllis’s stare was locked onto the middle distance.

 He gagged, pulling his hand away.

 “Jesus…” Laddie swore, wiping the blood down his front. “What happened? Where’s Star?”

Phyllis turned her head, very slowly, to inspect Laddie.

“Who’s the father?” She uttered, soft.

Laddie tore past her.

.

.

The bedroom door was open. New life, old life, burrowed life. The smell of babies and vampires sent Laddie reeling. It was an odd combination, a cruel combination.

Star was on her side, old sheets wrapped around her legs to conceal her modesty, her frizzy hair stuck to the pillows where she had tossed, where she had wept. Her eyes were closed.

A man was bent over her, his hand gliding across her shoulder. He kept repeating her name, temperate and low, and brushed the damp net of curls that had gathered in the crevice in her neck.  She did not stir. The man leant back with a thunderous sigh and pressed two sharp nails to his temple. A mop of chestnut hair, a canvas jacket over standard dark clothes, and Phyllis’s face. Edgar Frog.

Sam, drawn tall like a white tombstone in designer linen and corduroy, unchecked himself from the shadow of the window and placed a hand on Edgar’s back, drawing circles at the bottom of his spine. Alan, feet up on the stick furniture, sat smoking, visibly bored. Edgar turned his head to acknowledge Sam, and there was nothing platonic in the way Sam’s fingers stroked the back of Edgar’s hair, thumb pushed into the nape, or how Edgar leaned back into the touch, as if he could fall inside it.

The Moses basket was at the foot of the bed. Something tiny squirmed within it, kicking at the shawl that acted as a makeshift blanket. It mewled, high and needy.

Edgar stonily appraised it, as if he had forgotten it was ever there in the first place. His regarded the room where Star had spent her last days, settling on the waste paper basket stuffed with tissues stained with blood and mucus, until eventually, he got to Laddie. Rage shadowed Edgar’s face, pulling the darkness further and further into his features, until Laddie was certain he would become it.

The baby cried out again, more insistently.

Alan furrowed his brow, put out his cigarette, sitting up with gathering interest.

 Sam twitched, bemused. He swaggered to the basket, waggling his fingers in greeting. His nostrils pinched, then pinched again, and he lifted his hands to his head, as if he couldn’t believe it. He slowly started to smile, a clear white smile that showed all his teeth.

“Edgar. He’s got your blood!”

“What?” Edgar gruffly blinked at Sam, as if trying to place him. Alan bit through the end of his newly lit cigarette. “Are you sure?”

Sam got on his hands and knees, face and teeth centimeters from the swaddled infant. He inhaled deep, the shawl fluttering with the gust that carried through Sam like a draft in a churchyard. Laddie held his breath like a knife to his chest.

“Yeah,” Sam beamed up at Edgar. He could still look like a summer sky, could Sam, but it was all wrong. Like a horror novel hidden in a children’s book. “Nothing like a vampire paternity test. Can’t you smell it? Holy shit, you’re a father.”

Edgar was to his feet in a blur. So was Alan. It was almost comical, the three of them, bent over the basket like some twisted 70s sitcom. Star’s eyelashes quivered on her cheeks.

The baby burbled, kicking out a cross little foot. Star’s shawl, cream coloured with glittering roses, must have smelt like the mother it – no, _he_ missed.

Alan assessed the child with a mingling of rage and fascination. Laddie wasn’t surprised. It was a baby, but it was still Edgar, in a way. Sam kept grinning, petting the baby’s stomach, kissing the toes. The baby calmed, the warbles of its cry keening into a contented hum.

Edgar didn’t touch the baby. He looked from the basket to Star, and back again.

Laddie crept across the room, desperate to close the distance between himself and Star. Edgar’s hand breached against his chest, halting him midway.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Edgar’s snarl was primal. Laddie could hear the soak of demon blood in it, or that could just have been his grief. What was the difference, anyway? “I could have saved her. Done something.”

Sam and Alan exchanged glances.

“No, you couldn’t have,” Laddie glared at Edgar, keening the shape of his blunt teeth with his scabbed tongue. “She told me she only did what you would have wanted.”

Edgar’s eyes were brown like the crud of ash in oil drums. Laddie turned his attention to the basket, only to feel a tremor, for Edgar was watching him, close.

“Don’t do anything you might regret, kid,” He warned. “We can work this out.”

“What do you mean?” Laddie spat out. Star’s anklet was missing. “How? By giving _him_ …” He gestured to the basket. “…another undead relative? Fantastic parenting, Frog.”

Edgar looked at him blankly.

“She didn’t want to be what you were,” Laddie was half lying, he knew that much. “You abandoned her, she abandoned you, and I think you’re even.”

“Easy there, Laddie,” Sam held up his hands, but he took a pace forward. He thought it would be Alan he had to fear. But Sam was in love, and he alone knew how dangerous that could be. “Let’s not be hasty. If I recall correctly, you don’t even have visiting rights, buddy.”

“It’s true, though,” Laddie whispered as he spun back to Edgar, who hesitated. “That’s what you told Star, isn’t it? To run and not look back if you ever turned? Your memory can’t be that shit, Edgar.”

Edgar growled.

“That was before…”

“Before this? You a fucking hypocrite, Frog.”

“She was dying, anyway,” Alan drawled. “She had some sort of rot in her lungs. I could smell it in here.”

Smell. Taste. Vampires with senses like wanderlust, taking in everything, greedily consuming what they could and couldn’t experience. Death was Star’s personal joy, a natural feat that neither Sam, Alan, nor Edgar would know. She had reached that point where finally nobody could chase her.

“Sam. Alan.” Edgar curled his fist into Laddie’s shirt. The worn heel of Laddie’s trainers left the floor. “I want a word with Laddie. Alone.”

Sam sulkily hid his claws in his pockets. Alan, who had initially bristled at the order, shot Laddie a look as he closed the bedroom door. His eyes lazily trailed up Edgar’s grip on Laddie and Laddie shivered, suddenly smelling oil and damp satin.

Edgar shoved Laddie away, stalking to the door. He rested his forehead against the wood, breathing evenly. Laddie heard the twist of a lock, the churn of metal clicking and cutting off the world.

Laddie knelt in front of the basket. If he was going to die, he wanted to look at the last little bit of Star in the world.

The baby was squashed, quite ugly, chestnut curls twisting on its cushy egg head. Its eyes lolled in its sockets, before militantly fixing on him. It had short, thick fingers, a flat angry mouth. Somebody had told him all babies looked the same. But there was no doubt this baby was Edgar’s.

Edgar supported Star’s head, lifting her into a half embrace, her bedraggled hair collected between his fingertips. The towels fell away. Her legs were long and thin like stripped back birch branches, skin dry and raw from illness. Edgar hissed, a low drone of agony, and submerged his face in her neck.

“She was loyal to you, even to the end,” Laddie picked up the baby, still swaddled in Star’s shawl. “At least, to the man she knew.”

“She did well.” Edgar replied, bitter. “Too well. I trained her too hard, drove her too far.”

“You drove her away, yeah.”  Laddie sniffed. He would cry, but his tears had dried a long time ago. It wasn’t his job to deal with Edgar’s cruddy, belated grief. “You couldn’t have protected her from Alan, could you?”

Edgar stiffened.

“He’s better now.”

“Only because he got what he wanted.”

“This is not the conversation we should be having, kid,” Edgar sighed, weary, human in his manner, and he held Star limply to him. “I want you to take the kid.”

Laddie blinked. The baby arched in his arms, uncomfortable, minuscule hands outstretched to the comatose woman on the bed.

“W-what?”

There was a horrible pop of skin, a _crack_ as Edgar sunk his teeth into Star’s neck.  A yell rushed from Laddie’s throat and the baby screamed in retaliation.

“She honoured her promise,” Star’s blood was bright against the stubble of Edgar’s chin. Not the non-pulsing black of a corpse, although Edgar’s eyes were now that colour. “So I’ll give you a chance. You take the kid, you run from here. Give or take a couple of years…” He laid Star back down. Her eyebrow twitched, eyelashes shimmering. “And I’ll be coming for you.”

“Bastard!” Laddie barely had time to find the box cutter in his jeans before he was swept up, Edgar’s palm flat against his neck, his feet kicking aimlessly beneath him. Edgar evaluated him, pitiless, even as Laddie’s tears mingled with the blood on Edgar’s hands. “Please, don’t do this to her. She couldn’t live with it. Not with David, not even with me. What makes you think you’ll be any different? Just let her die. It’s better than letting her _wither_ , Edgar.”

“ _You_ were willing to let her die,” Edgar grunted, lengthening nails pricking Laddie’s veins.  A shameful heat wound up Laddie’s body.  “Happy enough to take her son from her. Happy enough to see her _diseased.”_

“No wonder she never fucking told you,” Laddie gritted his teeth. “She must have seen the danger a mile off.”

Edgar dropped him.

“Go.” He said dully as Laddie stumbled to his feet, the baby safe and silent in his arms. “Give the kid a few years of sunshine. Hell…” He chuckled crustily, and Laddie thought fuck, he sounded almost insane. “Give him a few years away from Alan.”

The door behind him sprung open.

“Go.” Edgar mouthed.

His face began to change.

**_“Scram, kid.”_ **

**_._ **

**_._ **

**_._ **

It was July 8th, 1995.

His watch read 3:07.

There was no sign of Alan and Sam. Phyllis had curled up her joint and dropped it in the bin.

Laddie fumbled one handed with his truck keys, sobbing like a ten year old. A hand on his back was greeted with a box cutter held tremblingly aloft.

Phyllis looked at him curiously, carrying the photo album. She opened the truck door, and slid it on the seat.

“Fill the rest for me, hm?” She barely seemed to note his tears. She just gazed at the child wrapped in cream and pink. Edgar’s child, Star’s child, her grandchild.

She kissed the baby’s forehead, winding Star’s anklet around the chubby ankle, and then she kissed Laddie on both cheeks, licking the blood off his chin where Edgar’s claws had caught.

“Now,” She looked Laddie dead in the eye. “I’d run if I were you.”


End file.
